


Sleigh Ride

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Chases, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Horses, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8686897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Just another day at the SSR, this time involving blizzards, stolen horses, and a stole-- er, commandeered sleigh.





	

Slipping and sliding through wet ankle-deep snow in her good shoes, Peggy found herself shouting yet another sentence that she had never expected, in her Hampstead youth, would end up crossing her lips: "Someone stop that horse!"

All she got were a few baffled looks from the handful of people nearby. On a leaden gray afternoon, with large wet snowflakes sifting down from a dull sky, there weren't a lot of people out and about in Central Park, and none of the chestnut vendors and families with small, snow-obsessed children seemed inclined to pause for a disheveled woman pursuing, on foot, a galloping policeman's horse with its uniformed rider bent low over its neck.

"Fine," Peggy murmured, stumbling to a halt in the slush as her quarry clattered away from her. She looked around for some form of transportation -- in this miserable weather, even Manhattan's ubiquitous cabs were few and far between -- and her eye fell on a tourist sleigh which had stopped at a chestnut vendor so that the happy-looking couple curled up in the back could obtain some treats for themselves.

"Excuse me, excuse me." Peggy dashed up to the sleigh waving her SSR warrant card. "I'm a federal agent and I need your sleigh."

"... what?" the driver said, and then, as Peggy firmly and briskly detached him from his seat, "Madam! I beg your pardon --"

"Very sorry," Peggy said to the couple in the back, as she hopped up into the suddenly and forcibly vacated driver's seat. "I need this sleigh to pursue an escaping Communist spy."

"Okay," the young man said agreeably, wrapping an arm around the girl with him, nestled under a blanket. Both were red-cheeked with cold, and looked fascinated by the drama unfolding in front of them.

"I mean," Peggy said with all the patience she could muster, as Dottie and her horse vanished from view, "that you should get down now -- Oh, _do stop that!"_ The driver was trying to obtain her attention by tapping her leg with his whip. Peggy grasped the whip by the business end and snatched it out of his hand.

"We paid our fifty cents and we aim to get our money's worth," the girl in the back said belligerently.

"Very well," Peggy snapped, and slapped the reins on the horse's back. There was a yelp from the cozy bundle in the backseat, which she ignored.

***

Daniel wasn't well suited to foot pursuit at the best of times, let alone in an increasingly heavy snowfall with Peggy sprinting off in pursuit of a Communist spy pretending to be a police officer and driving a _stolen horse._

He had just resigned himself to a long walk back to their car when a sleigh clattered up alongside him, appearing out of the whirling snowflakes. "Daniel, get in!" shouted an all-too-familiar voice.

"Peggy, did you steal this?" Daniel demanded, clutching the ornate curling brick-a-brack beside the seat. He wasn't entirely confident in his ability to get up into it, or sure that he wanted to.

"No, I commandeered it." Peggy reached down to grip his hand and made a concerted effort to haul him up onto the seat next to her. She was strong, but not that strong. He sighed and pushed off with his crutch, tumbling into the wet, snow-slick seat. Peggy slapped the reins onto the horse's back and sent him toppling sideways into her as they accelerated.

That part was nice, at least -- aside from the fact that he nearly catapulted her off the slick seat into the snow-covered shrubbery.

"Careful!" Peggy gasped, steering the horse on a caroming trajectory. She rocketed down the broad Central Park sidewalk, veering around startled pedestrians. The sleigh's runners shrieked on pavement. Daniel, as he struggled to right himself in the passenger seat while holding onto his crutch, had an unpleasant thought.

"Have you ever driven a sleigh before?"

"No, have you?" Peggy asked hopefully.

"... no, sorry."

"Needs must," she murmured, clinging to the reins as snow pelted them at increasing speed. The horse was galloping now.

"Say, miss, we're goin' awfully fast," said a voice from the back, in a strong Brooklyn accent. Daniel jumped, nearly losing his grip on the slippery seat rail, looked back, and then looked accusingly at Peggy.

"Peg, who are these people?"

"Tom," the young man volunteered, looking wild-eyed.

"Nancy," the girl said.

"Nice to meet you," Daniel said. " _Peggy."_

"Please do me a favor and tell me if either of you see a running horse?" Peggy tossed over her shoulder. They pelted past the Central Park skating rink, the sleigh slewing wildly on its runners.

"Who _are_ you people?" Tom wanted to know, clinging desperately to his hat.

"Are you detectives, miss?"

"We're federal agents," Daniel said. "... Peggy, the lamppost!"

Fortunately the horse was attuned to its own self-preservation. They skidded out onto Fifth Avenue, swerving around a car that honked at them.

"That man was driving far too fast for conditions," Peggy declared, cornering sharply.

"Look who's talking," Daniel said between his teeth.

"She'll be heading uptown, if she hasn't abandoned the horse --"

"There, miss, there!" the girl in the backseat cried, pointing.

Daniel looked, just in time to glimpse, through the falling snow, a horse and uniformed rider leap a construction barricade and -- surely not --

But, yes. The horse balked at the entrance to the subway stairwell, but Dottie applied her spurs, or at least her boots, and the horse vanished from sight.

"Peggy, _please_ do not try to take this sleigh into the subway."

"Don't be absurd, Daniel." Peggy drew the puffing horse to a halt behind the construction barricade. "Thank you for your indulgence," she told the two passengers. "Can you make it back from here?"

"Oh, yes, miss," Nancy declared, already scrambling into the front seat.

"Um," her beau said weakly, white-faced.

Peggy handed the reins off to Nancy, hopped down, and gave Daniel a hand. The wind was picking up, swirling snowflakes around them; the accumulated snow was over the tops of his shoes, with meltwater freezing into puddles underneath the white layer.

"You can go on ahead," he told Peggy as she kept hold of his hand while they stumbled and slid to the subway stairs.

"Nonsense. We're a team, aren't we?"

He wasn't inclined to argue, since she was the main thing keeping him from tumbling down the slippery stairs, but couldn't resist snagging a quick kiss. The falling veil of snow kept them discreet.

There was no real hope that they'd catch up to Dottie, and indeed, they found the police horse on the subway platform, looking aimless and lost. Peggy looked anxiously down the tunnel.

"Did she go uptown, or duck over to the downtown side? Daniel --"

"I don't know. There's no way to tell for sure."

"The train schedules --" she began.

"Will be useless, because of the weather. Half the trains in the city will be delayed or running out of schedule."

Peggy let out an un-Peggylike noise of frustration. She paused to shake slush out of her shoe before unknotting the horse's reins. "We were so close."

"We know she's in the city, at least."

"Yes, but not why or where." She began trying to coax the reluctant horse up the subway steps.

Eventually, between the two of them, they got the horse to street level, at which point Daniel was startled to find the sleigh waiting for them.

"We thought you might come back, miss!" the girl called cheerily, leaning over the side. Her boyfriend was up front with her now, although he didn't look happy about it. "We said, Tom and me, we should help that detective lady if we can."

The look on Tom's face let Daniel know that this wasn't precisely how the conversation had gone down. He could relate.

"That's wonderful of you; thank you." Peggy tied the horse's reins to the back of the sleigh and climbed up. Nancy started to hand the reins over, but Peggy shook her head and climbed into the back, reaching down a hand for Daniel. "You're doing quite well. Please return us to the south end of the park. That's where our car is."

"There's some blankets back there, miss, for you to get warmed up in," Nancy said over her shoulder. Her hands, in mended white gloves, were firm on the reins. She looked like she was having the time of her life.

"Daniel?" Peggy murmured, passing a blanket over to him. He was starting to shiver. They had both been too long in L.A.; neither their thin coats nor desert-warm blood could adequately handle the wet chill of a New York winter.

"So, we'll need to call in to the office once we get back to the car," Peggy was saying as she tucked the blankets around herself and Daniel. "We might be able to identify Dottie's target -- Nancy, please take it slowly, don't forget we're towing a horse."

"Of course, miss!" Nancy carolled gaily from the front seat.

"Your hands are freezing," Daniel murmured, chafing Peggy's cold-roughened knuckles under the blanket.

"I lost a glove chasing Dottie. Pity -- I did like those gloves."

Daniel gave a sudden laugh. "Can't wait to try explaining this one to Jack."

"What's to explain? We sighted Dottie, went in pursuit --"

"Stole a sleigh, pursued a horse into the subway --"

"Just another day's work in the SSR," she said, and for a moment they just grinned at each other, as the snowflakes swirled around them and settled on the ruff of the fuzzy blanket. Beneath it, Peggy's body was warm against his, and their linked hands were firmly nestled between them.

"I shouldn't be the one to tell _you_ this," Nancy said over her shoulder, "but one's supposed to kiss in the back of them fancy carriage rides, that's why one pays for 'em, y'know ..."

"That's what _I_ thought," Tom muttered, huddled in a shivering ball on the seat beside her.

"Oh, don't have a fit now," Nancy told him, and leaned over to plant a firm kiss on his blue-tinged lips.

Daniel grinned. Peggy turned her smile to meet his, her bright lipstick the only color in a monochrome world, and he leaned down to taste it.


End file.
